Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was a French general who rose to First Consul and then Emperor of the French. He became an artillery officer in 1785, won notice at Toulon in 1793 and crushed a Paris royalist rising in 1795. After beating the Austrians and Italian allies in 1796, he invaded Egypt in 1798, but Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Nile. Back in France he overthrew the Directory in 1799.

His Civil Code of 1804 reshaped French law, and that December he crowned himself emperor at Notre Dame with a replica of Charlemagne's crown. He won at Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland (1807).

The Peninsular War from 1808 and the Moscow retreat of 1812, costing about sixty thousand men, wore his armies down. After Leipzig he abdicated to Elba in 1814, escaped for the Hundred Days and lost at Waterloo in 1815. He died on Saint Helena in 1821.